One of these friends has been Val, who is arguably the nicest person ever. And she’s always so patient when I use her in a shot. (“Did you get the shot? No? Do you want me to keep standing here? Ok….” LOL.) Last week, our friend Nycole Hampton invited us to Porkchop in the West Loop. (Do you like BBQ? You definitely need to check this place out.) Everyone did a great job of snapping food pictures. I did too….on Snapchat. LOL. I ended up using Walter for portraits. Well, more specifically Val Portraits.

I eyed the bar as soon as I came into Porkchop. Luckily, she was game.

I was playing around my Speedlight flash that night. I like this picture of Val sitting alone in the front booth, but I can understand why people wouldn’t dig this shot. (I mean, you can’t see her face…that is a disservice to everyone.)

Shooting through the window

We finally sat down to a table full of BBQ goodies, including ribs, sausage (OMG, so good), salmon (yes, you read right), corn, cornbread and fries (the fries were awesome). It was pretty damn good.

And of course, I don’t have any pictures of the food. :-\

After I stuffed my mouth silly, I stepped away from the table to use the restroom. What I found was a dark hallway with a sink and a single lightbulb hanging from a cord. OMG, I need to get a picture, I thought and ran back to the table to grab Val. Again, I will emphasize how nice she is because she was in the middle of eating but left her dinner just so I could take her picture. When we got to the sink, I positioned her in front of the mirror and clicked away. But something was missing. Once again, I ran back to the table. This time it was to grab my lipstick….and we ended up with this shot:

For the record, I cleaned the mirror really, really well afterwards! Oh, and I never got to use the restroom.

Fun footnote: Val broke the lipstick in half while drawing the heart and felt bad. I told her there was nothing to feel bad about (anything for the shot!). Floyd, who was with us – and will hopefully post the pictures he took from his perspective – goes, “As long as it wasn’t a MAC lipstick.” Oh man, the facial expression he had when he learned that it was….I think the man left a little heartbroken that night. Hahahahahaha.